St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) (1891-1942): Through the narrow gate
Edith
Stein was a Jewish philospher, a disciple of Husserl, who converted to
Catholicism. She entered the Carmelite community and died at Auschwitz
in 1942. Canonised by Pope John Paul II, she is also honoured as patron
of Europe.
'I picked a book at random and took out a large volume. It bore the title The Life of St. Teresa of Avila.
I began to read, was at once captivated, and did not stop till I had
reached the end. As I closed the book - it was already dawn - I said,
"This is the truth".'
The following day, the reader went to the local church and asked to
be baptised. The elderly priest asked her, 'How long have you been
taking instruction?' 'Please, Father,' she replied, 'test my knowledge.'
And he did, extensively. At the end, the priest was astonished by her
accurate answers and, on New Year's Day 1922, Edith Stein was baptised
into the Catholic faith. She chose Teresa as her baptismal name, and
later that day she received the Eucharist for the first time.
A difficult path
The road to faith in Jesus
Christ was not an easy one for Edith. The youngest in her family, she
was born into the Jewish faith on 12 October 1891, in the German city of
Breslau, now Wroclaw, in Poland. Her father died when she was young,
and her mother, Auguste, raised her seven children and ran the family
timber business, even into her eighties. She was an impressive woman,
who was proud of her Jewish traditions and faith.
By the age of twenty-one, Edith was a self-confessed atheist. To
placate her mother, she continued to attend the synagogue, but she felt
nothing there. In the meantime, she had excelled at her studies, and in
1916, after completing her doctoral thesis in philosophy, she became
assistant to the great professor of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl.
Jolt to the system
It was while she was with Husserl that Edith received the first jolt to her convinced atheism. A friend of hers, Adolf Reinach, a fellow philosopher at Göttingen, had died, and his widow had requested Edith to sort out his papers. Edith got a profound shock when she discovered how this Christian woman accepted the cross of Adolf's death.
Later Edith wrote, 'It was then that I first encountered the cross
and the divine strength which it inspires in those who bear it. It was
the moment in which my unbelief was shattered. Christ streamed out upon
me: Christ in the mystery of the cross.'
Breaking the news
Breaking the news
It was at Göttingen also that she came into contact with Hedwig Conrad-Martius and his wife. It was in their house, one night when they had gone out to a function, that Edith picked up the volume of St. Teresa's life and began to read. Hedwig later stood for her at her baptism.
Shortly after this event, Edith knew she could not keep her secret
from her mother, and told her, 'Mother, I am a Catholic'. Auguste wept,
and Edith with her. Later, a friend wrote about Auguste at this time,
'As a God-fearing woman, she sensed without realizing it the holiness
radiating from her daughter and, though her suffering was excruciating,
she clearly recognised her helplessness before the mystery of grace'.
A silent corner
Edith spent the next few years at the Dominican convent in Speyer. There she taught German in exchange for a room and the meagre convent food. 'She quickly won the hearts of her pupils,' a sister wrote about her. 'In humility and simplicity almost unheard and unnoticed, she went quietly about her duties, always serenely friendly and accessible to anyone who wanted her help.'
The
world outside also wanted Edith. Her scholarship had not gone unnoticed,
and so she went out regularly to give lectures to an appreciative
public.
Lectures, publications and other work continued to multiply but, in
the midst of it all, a life of deep prayer was growing. 'There is no
sense in rebelling against it,' she wrote. 'It is merely necessary that
one should, in fact, have a silent corner in which to converse with God,
as if nothing else existed, every day.'
A new life
By late 1932, the situation was becoming more and more difficult in Germany, especially for Jews. In January 1933, Hitler came to power and set up the Third Reich. The Nazis began to pass laws which were designed to marginalise non-Aryans from public life. On 23 February 1933, Edith gave her last lecture.
As one door closed, another seemed inexorably to open. The desire for
religious life, which she had felt for years, now began to flourish. In
May 1933, she visited the Carmel in Cologne, and on 14 October, the eve
of the feast of St. Teresa, her baptismal patron, she entered the
convent.
The famous philosopher and lecturer now became the novice. Her tastes
had always been simple, but now her little cell, no more than ten feet
square, contained nothing but a straw mattress, a water jug, a few
unframed pictures of Carmelite saints, and a plain wooden cross on the
wall. Such was the decor of a Carmelite cell. Here was the battleground
where daily the nun struggled against her own self-interest until her
nature was wedded to grace.
On 15 April 1934, Edith was clothed in the habit, and took the name
she herself had suggested, Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. The
following year, on Easter Sunday, she made her profession. 'How do you
feel?' someone asked. 'Like the bride of the Lamb!' was her reply.
Time running out
If 1935 brought much joy, the
following year brought sorrow. Initially, her mother had not returned
Edith's weekly letters. In time, however, Edith learned that Auguste had
begun to visit a local Carmel secretly, and soon she began to write to
her daughter. There was not a lot of time, however, for Auguste died
later that year, but Edith was so glad that mother and daughter had
become reconciled before the end came.
As the Nazis gained a stranglehold on the life of the nation, the
situation in Germany continued to deteriorate. A decision was made that
Edith and Rosa, her sister who had followed her into the Church and
Carmel, should leave Cologne and move to Echt in Holland.
Holland too
was in the grip of the Nazis, however, and many Jews were being deported
to the Polish concentration camps and to certain death.
In July 1942, the Dutch bishops issued a letter condemning the
treatment of the Jews. They urged the faithful to examine their
consciences, and to pray for divine help. The German authorities were
displeased at the bishops' audacity, and on 2 August all non-Aryan
people were arrested. It was a reprisal for the letter, the German
commissar said.
Auschwitz
That very afternoon, two SS officers arrived at the convent, and Edith was arrested, together with Rosa. From Echt, she was brought to Auschwitz extermination camp, in Poland. She never returned, for her life, and Rosa's, ended there on 9 August 1942, just a few days after their arrest.
Even in those terrible final days, however, she had work to do. A
Jewish businessman who knew her in the camp wrote later, 'Sr. Benedicta
at once took charge of the poor little ones, washed and combed them, and
saw to it that they got food and attention'.
Another fellow prisoner
said, 'She was thinking of the sorrow she foresaw: not her own sorrow -
for that she was far too calm - but the sorrow that awaited others. Her
whole appearance suggested only one thought to me: a pietà without Christ'.
Today, Auschwitz stands pristine in its condition, preserved as a
museum by the Polish nation, as if frozen in time from the moment the
Nazi guards left it. It is a painful reminder to the world of the evil
power of racism. Like the millions of others, no stone marks Edith's
grave.
Beatification
In 1998 Pope John Paul canonised
her as a saint, with a feast on the ninth of this month. On that
occasion, the Pope said, 'The modern world boasts of the enticing door
which says everything is permitted. It ignores the narrow gate of
discernment and renunciation.
'I am speaking to you, young Christians. Your life is not an endless
series of open doors! Listen to your heart! Do not stay on the surface,
but go to the heart of things! And when the time is right, have the
courage to decide! The Lord is waiting for you to put your freedom in
his good hands.'
Edith would surely have added: 'This is the truth'!